to tell her, when the wind swept across her
burnished hair, that the air was full of melody. And when she looked
especially ethereal--as she did at times--I would catch her in my
arms, and bid her tell me, on peril of her life, what song was hidden
in her heart, that I might teach it to my violin, and die great. Yet,
remarkable as it seems to me still, the Spirit of Music that surely
dwelt within her, dwelt there a dumb prisoner. It had no audible
voice, though I was not alone in feeling its presence in her eyes, on
her lips, in her spiritual charm.

She had a voice that was melody itself, yet she never sang. I always
fancied her hands were a musician's hands, yet she never played. This
was the more singular as her mother had been a great singer, and her
father, while he had never risen above the desk of _chef d'orchestre_
in a local playhouse, was no mean musician.

Often, when the charm of her spirit was on me, I would pretend to
weave a spell about her, and conjure the spirit that was imprisoned in
the heart that was mine, to come forth from the shrine he was so
impudently usurping.

Ah, those were the days of my youth!

We had been betrothed but a brief time when Rodriguez, for some
seasons a European celebrity, made his first appearance in our city.

I had heard most of the great violinists of that time, had known some
of them well, had played with many of them, as I did later with
Rodriguez, but I had never chanced to see or hear him.

His fame had, however, preceded him. The newspapers were full of him.
Faster even than the tales of his genius had travelled the tales of
his follies--tales that out-Don-Juaned the famous rake of tradition.

However little credence one gives to such reports--mad stories of a
scandalous nature--these repeated episodes of excesses, only tolerated
in the conspicuous, do color one's expectations. I suppose that, being
young, I expected to see a man whose face would bear the brand of his
errors as well as the stamp of his genius.

That was not Rodriguez's fate. Whatever the temperamental struggle had
been, he was "take him for all in all," the least disappointing famous
man that my experience had ever shown me. He was more virile than
handsome, and no more aesthetic to look at than he was ascetic. At
that time he was on the sunny side of forty, and not yet at the zenith
of his great career. His face was fine, manly, and sympathetic. His
brow was broad, his eyes deep-set and wide